Pugslayer: Foreigners really have a hard time grasping the sheer size of America. When I toured Europe the car question was one of the most common I got. Why do American's have so many cars? Why are we so obsessed with them. It's hard to explain to them the sheer size of even a small city.
- I like to explain the scale and vast emptiness this way: Wyoming is roughly the size of the entire United Kingdom. It's not even our biggest state, there are nine that are even bigger. It has roughly 580,000 people living in it. Total. North Dakota is about 3/4 the size of the UK. There are 18 states larger. It has less than 700,000 people living in it. Montana is one and a half times the size of the UK. It's our fourth largest state. It has just over a million people living there. Mississippi is a little smaller than England and it happens to be in an area of the country that's pretty well settled. Lots of people live there. Like a whole 2.9 million.
Alaska is just comical. Largest state and about 7 times the size of the UK. 730,000 people in the whole place.
NotaManMohanSingh: Why do "inner cities" (similar to the projects in Chicago? I read a couple of books on those) which are projected as being high crime areas continue to be so?
These are certainly in no way comparable to slums of Rio (for some reason, I felt safer in Jo'burg as compared to Rio), and America despite its deficit, can certainly muster massive financial resources to "fix" the problems.
Why isnt there more visible policing, active engagement of the community, efforts to create jobs, better schools etc in these relatively small pockets? Is it to do with the politics?
- The biggest issue is that no one cares enough to fix it. Those bad areas of town are areas that you aren't likely to find yourself in unless you're unfortunate. People who don't live there can mostly avoid the problem.
Actually fixing the problem takes more than just money. Money we've got, though spending it on such a project is often political suicide due to our "you're poor because you didn't try hard enough to overcome adversity" attitude. What you really need are people to go in and spend real time and effort to change cultural norms.
When they do get fixed, they're usually fixed by gentrification, which doesn't really fix the problem, it just moves it to another part of the city.
All that said, you probably believe the inner cities to be more violent and dangerous than they actually are. Movies are entirely unrealistic about the inner cities and even our news sensationalizes it a lot. Remember, it's not what the inner cities are actually like, but what people who don't live there believe they're like.
I once lived in one of the poorest areas of a mid-sized Texas city. It was one of the least safe areas in all of Texas. In my entire time there, I was never robbed, never car jacked, never shot at or had a knife pulled on me. I did get mugged once, but they didn't have weapons and I didn't have anything for them to take. I never saw anyone get shot. None of my friends had any serious problems and never saw any violent crime go down. The only place that had an armed guard taking money to the bank was the local Wal-Mart, but they routinely carried the equivalent of 4 million rupees each day. It's really not common to use an armed guard unless you're carrying $100,000 or more to the bank.
That's not to say crime didn't happen there. It did. A lot of it, comparatively speaking to the nice upscale neighborhood I live in today. It just probably wasn't going to happen to you, even if you looked like you didn't belong.
Chicago is one of the deadliest cities in America. They had 500 homicides last year. I'm told more Americans are typically killed there in a year than in Afghanistan. Still, it's a city of 2.8 million people. 38 million people came to visit. If you lived there, your chance of being killed last year was about 0.02% -- effectively zero. I can't even imagine what the odds are for someone just visiting. It's really not as dangerous as you're imagining it.
I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions that I get from foreigners. Everyone assumes it's scarily violent here and I've had people tell me they'd love to come visit, but they're afraid they'll be shot. I've never been shot at in my life, and I don't expect I ever will be.
- I worked for a Japanese company for a while. Failure is not an option. If you fail, you will either lose your job or be marginalized. If that happens, you might lose your standing in society and might even lose your apartment -- some places only rent to people who work at certain companies or have certain social status. Losing a job is a career ender, and you will be lucky to get a job at all.
This means that everyone is terrified of taking risks. Very few people start their own business, and if they do, they're seen as rebels and mavericks and not traditional Japanese. If a decision has to be made, all of the associated managers will get together and work on it until there is consensus. No one person will take responsibility for any action or decision because if it goes bad, they might lose everything. It is better if five people make the decision, because then everyone agreed it as good and not everyone can be fired if the decision is bad. It's also better to not make a decision at all if consensus can't be reached than to make a bad decision.
I remember being in a meeting where someone needed to make a decision right now and we couldn't figure out if upper management would approve.
Being the only American manager in the room, I told them that we were going to go ahead with the more ambitious plan because it's what everyone really wanted anyway, and it was "easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission." This statement stunned every one of the Japanese in the room. One of them finally looked at me and said, "you can say that. We cannot."
We went ahead and did it since I was willing to take the responsibility, but it was a distinct moment when I realized just how different we were.
fleeingmediocrity: I really do object to the characterization of Canada as America-lite.
- That line is one that I knew would make Canadians very upset. I know a lot of Canadians, I've been to your country many times and I've even spent a few weeks in Montreal. You guys hate, and I mean really hate the idea that you're some sort of ersatz 51st state. I get it, I really do. There's a lot to be proud of in your country and there are some significant differences.
That said, there is absolutely zero culture shock for an American visiting Canada. Even Montreal is more of a quaint Americanized version of Europe. It feels different enough to be novel, but not so different that you don't quickly feel at home.
Go to Europe, and you will know the second you cross from Germany into France. Or from France to Spain. Or Germany to the Czech Republic. Believe me, you'll notice you're in a different country. If you felt at home in one, you'll definitely feel like an outsider in the other.
Or, for a closer comparison, try visiting Mexico some time. I've done that too. Trust me, you'll feel lost pretty fast. All your normal cultural groundings are gone, even in a world of globalization. Everything works just a little bit differently than you're used to down there -- hell, you can't even drink the water that comes out of the tap and the city might be under martial law.
I get that you're different. But Canada and the United States are more alike than they are different. I don't mean that as insult, but I am telling it like it will appear to someone who's never visited. I didn't spare harsh words for my country either.
benoit__balls: I wasn't offended, and I didn't think your "America-lite" comment was derogatory, all I wanted to do was point out the fact that neighbouring countries are bound to be similar to each other in many ways. I think what puts most Canadians off is the way Americans refer to the similarity, that doesn't mean Canadians are disputing the congruence. It's always stated as if Americanism is something we aspire to, as if all we are doing over here in Canada is trying to emulate your country (Stephen Harper excluded), like we have no identity or values of our own. Like we are lesser and not equals. It makes us feel belittled and creates the animosity we are apparently so famous for towards our Southern neighbour. Canada is influenced by America and vice versa, it's a two way street, but it's never expressed like that. That's all I was trying to say. I agree that the generalization and perception does not follow reality. I don't expect that you write an encyclopedia on the subject.
Just as a side-note, I have to wonder if the rest of the world (i.e. non-Americans) sees Canada as America-lite as well? I mean, being foreigners? You mentioned you were referring to how the average American perceives Canada. Just wondering if it would be different for other nationalities?
- Ah. That's an interesting point and not one I've heard my Canadian friends mention.
I can see how you'd perceive it that way, but I don't think it's all that accurate. I think for Americans, we can look south and see a nation that is distinctly different from our own even though we share a very long common border. It's really hard to identify with Mexico, even for cities and states in close proximity. The cultures and experiences are just so different. You will always recognize that you're not at home. In light of that, all we can see is how similar you are. It amuses us that you think you're so different, and it's just an American thing to give someone a good ribbing when we think they're taking things a little too seriously.
We don't think you're trying to emulate us, we just think you essentially are us. Remember too, we think of New Yorkers as distinctly different people from Southern Californians, but both share the American culture. You're distinctly different, but no more so than we're already used to. The more you protest that you're not at all like us, the more comical we think it is.
From my travels in Europe, no one seems to know the difference between a Canadian and an American other than on a foreign policy basis. I routinely passed for Canadian without question -- and some of us do that a lot so that we don't have to continually apologize and defend some of the more asinine foreign policy decisions our country makes.
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